


outraged yelling in the foreground

by paranomastic



Series: various lumity soulmate noises [2]
Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:15:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26239216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paranomastic/pseuds/paranomastic
Summary: A while into her stay at the Owl House, Luz wakes up... changed? Look, she put a lot of thought into what kind of tattoo she would get if she got a tattoo, and this one ain't it.Why is hers so... mean?Sequel to muffled abomination noises in the distance.
Relationships: Amity Blight/Luz Noceda
Series: various lumity soulmate noises [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1905805
Comments: 21
Kudos: 596





	outraged yelling in the foreground

**Author's Note:**

> So I said I might do a Luz companion piece to the Amity one and well... you guys uh. Seemed to like that one, so I got on it. It's way more dialogue-heavy, but that seemed like the right thing to do to differentiate the POVs.
> 
> Can't promise the third one as quickly, but there will in fact be a third mixed perspective one to wrap all this up! Maybe I'll even get properly canon-divergent, who can say?

“EDA, I THINK I GOT CURSED?”

There are few phrases less ideal to break the blessed silence of a rare morning without distant screaming on the Boiling Isles, and yet here this was, screamed close-up! Thrown out recklessly into the air and just hanging - for a moment, at least, before Luz Noceda crashed out of the bathroom and into the living room, clutching at her arm not quite in pain, but definitely in confusion.

“Is it one of those gross pus-based ones? Do you need someone to put you out of your misery?” King was the first on the scene by virtue of having already been on the scene, sleeping on the couch. By now, though, he had hopped up to his full height, which percentage-wise wasn’t much of an increase, but at least he made up for it with presence. “Because I totally will, but I’m gonna need my raincoat if you’re full of pus! Takes _forever_ to get out of my _anything_.”

“King, that’s not helpful right now, but I do want to see you in a little raincoat if I survive this!” Luz sort of marched in place, unsure where (or how) to stop, “Eda?”

“Yeesh, kid, I’m up!” Eda entered the room, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “What the heck are you talking about? Because if you’re standing here yelling, it sure isn’t much of a curse.”

“There’s no pus, so don’t worry, Eda, I’ll take care of it! I promise to take as little joy in this act of violence as I reasonably can! For you, Luz!” King gestured dramatically outwards with one paw, laying the other delicately across his forehead, “I’ll use one of the swords. Or maybe an axe?” The dramatic pose was dropped, and one hand reached up for a thoughtful stroke at his chin, “Sorry, I’m being insensitive - it’s _your_ funeral, Luz, what would _you_ like _me_ to off you with?”

Luz staggered a couple steps back, “I don’t want to get offed! I want a normal explanation, please! Or… at least some kind of explanation?”

“No one’s offing anyone! And you still aren’t allowed to touch the swords and/or axes after the last time.” Eda sighed, “Okay, can we take this from the top?”

“Sorry, Luz! Guess you have to live with your misery.” A beat. “Also wait, if you’re cursed... Who cursed you? I can at least off them!” He put up his very tiny dukes, “Nobody curses _my_ Luz and gets away with it!”

“That would be very sweet any time but now, King!” Luz insisted. “And I don’t know what happened, I just woke up and my skin was yelling at me!”

Eda waved a hand, “Oh, that’s probably just a wailing boil, you’re not really supposed to get them until you get older, but maybe your skin is just terrible.” She blinked. “Wait, no, wailing boils definitely only happen to witches. What?”

“First off: ew, really? Second off: no, not literally! I woke up and, like, a demon got mad at me during the night or something, look!”

Eda squinted at Luz’s now-outstretched arm, which had become outstretched so fast it almost slugged her in the nose, and inspected it for a few moments that, for Luz, felt like an eternity. Then she started laughing so hard she bent over to the ground.

Luz gasped, “Oh no, did the curse get you, too? Is it contagious? You don’t need another one!”

“No, no, nothing like that, it’s…” Eda straightened up, wiping at her eye, demeanor completely calm, “I mean it’s weird that it’s happening to you, but you’re technically a magic-user now, so I guess the spell found you.”

“You have done next to nothing to actually calm me down even a little!” Luz accused, “What spell?”

“Psh, _relax_. You are not full of pus and you are not going to die. Not from this, anyway, I mean… y’know. Human mortality! You’re also not cursed, either.” She drew a quick circle with her hand and two chairs crossed the room to them, “You’re just… okay, so your human parents did sit you down and give you a talk when you were younger, right? Please say yes, I’m super not qualified to give most of it, and I can’t think of a way to get King out of the house for long enough to give it to you, because he does not need to hear it.”

“I resent being denied this knowledge, whatever it is!” King called from another part of the house.

Eda groaned, “You better not be in the weapon room!”

Okay, Luz was now in fact starting to calm down some. She sat down in one of the chairs, and Eda in the other. “Wha- I mean _yes_ , obviously, but what does that have to do with this?”

“So here on the Boiling Isles, there’s a little… complication to that whole ‘your growing and/or metamorphosing body` thing. No one really knows _why_ it happens - my money’s on the ‘bowlmates’ thing because I think it’s funny - but a very long time ago some witch or another cast a very powerful spell, and bada-bing-bada-boom, soulmate magic!” She sighed, “You get the first words your soulmate’ll say to you written out on you somewhere, but usually it’s just something stupid like ‘Hi,’ or ‘Can I get a side of eggs?’”

“Whoah… wait, how does dating happen? Er, I mean, why would you date? You date, right? There was the whole thing when I got here, with the warden guy?”

“Like I said, most of the time it’s something totally normal that doesn’t really help you at all. Whoever set up the spell probably _meant_ well, but the first words anyone says to you aren’t exactly unique. Or you’re like me and you just plain don’t have one!” Eda shrugged, “Then once you’re an adult, or earlier if you’re desperate, the pressure’s on so you don’t have to resort to the Matchmaking Coven.”

“The Matchmaking Coven?” Luz had by now shifted - well, with her, more like snapped - gears from “scared” to “interested.” “Why would you run from something like that? That’s the best coven you’ve told me about so far! And you’ve told me about a lot of covens!”

Eda rolled her eyes, “Their symbol is literally a pair of heart-shaped handcuffs, kid. You get locked in a building to one-sentence speed date until you either pass out or give up and start spouting random phrases and hoping you match with some schlub who’s easy to kick to the curb when they finally let you out.”

“That doesn't seem very romantic.”

“Romantic? No. Efficient? Very. What kind of matchmaker cares about romance, anyway?”

“I would! Love is kind of important to relationships!” Luz insisted.

“I wouldn’t! It’d be funny.” King contributed with a grunt from a room or two over.

Luz sighed and frowned, sinking lower into the chair as she took all of this in. “So I have a soulmate somewhere.”

“With like ninety-four percent accuracy, yeah.”

“And they have a tattoo like this too.”

“Probably, unless they’re back in your world.”

“And the first thing my soulmate is going to say to me is ‘I know you’re in there, you can’t hide from me’?”

“I’ll say this for you, it’s promising! Real dramatic stuff.”

“But that doesn’t even really narrow it down! Plenty of people have yelled stuff like that at me before.” Luz paused, then shrugged, “I’m real slippery when I wanna be, I can get into a lot of places I’m not supposed to. But I don’t think any of the five school janitors I can think of off the top of my head who have said these exact words to me are my soulmate. Someone might have even said that to me since I got here, I end up somewhere I’m not supposed to be like once a week at least!”

“For your sake, let’s hope your heart aims a bit higher up in terms of income level and mortality rate. But yeah, that’s the gist. There’s this old picture book about it I read when I was a kid, but I can never remember the name… anyway, I’ve never put too much stock in the whole thing and look at me! I’m still living a very fulfilling life surrounded by people I… well, people! And Hooty!”

“IIII have a soulmate tattoo!” At the mention of his name, Hooty wiggled into the room, extending uncomfortably close to every party present with his mere presence, “Want to see?”

Eda groaned, “You used a permanent marker to write the word ‘Crackers’ like fifty feet down yourself, Hooty, that’s not the same thing. House demons don’t get soulmate tattoos.”

“Oh yeah? Well I know that’s how I’ll find _my_ soulmate! One day someone’s going to say ‘Crackers’ to me, and I’ll know they’re the one! And I’ll hug them and squeeze them and never let them go as long as either of us live!”

“Eesh. Yeah, well, keep looking.” Eda crossed to the door and waved it closed, “Anyway, Luz, do you have any questions about this whole thing? And remember - I’m really not qualified to fill in any other holes in whatever talk your parents gave you about this stuff! Unless it’s dating advice, I’m great at that. Probably. Never actually given any.”

Luz gave it a few moments of thought. “What should I do if I meet someone who says my soulmate thing?”

“Say whatever comes naturally, I guess? Then check your tattoos against each other like you’re swapping staff insurance.” And then, lest anyone assume she could actually give expert advice, “Then punch ‘em in the jaw to establish your dominance in the relationship!”

Okay, noted that Eda would be less than helpful in matters of the heart going forward. Luz frowned, “Between this and that time a couple weeks ago when we all switched bodies to solve our problems, how many things on the Boiling Isles are weirdly fanfiction-y?”

Eda shrugged, “I have no idea other than what I can assume through basic context what fanfiction is, and from the look in your eyes I’m frightened to learn!” She let out a sigh, “Look, when in doubt, just remember: the words don’t do the love part for you. You have to do that. Being soulmates doesn’t mean you can’t strike out, you still have to put in the effort. But who knows, you might not have to worry about it for like fifty years!”

Realistic? Yes. Promising? No.

King entered from the direction of the weapons room, dragging a spear larger than himself behind him, “Alright, are we _sure_ we don’t have to- wait, Luz, what’s fanfiction?”

One quirky subplot and a couple less eventful days later, Luz headed to school! That was a thing she was going to do now, incredibly enough, just go to magic school! An everyday occurrence! And at magic school, she had magic school friends who also took magic school classes! And she ate magic school cafeteria food! And used magic- okay, a bathroom was a bathroom, probably, but still! Maybe the toilets flushed with magic or something.

She made a note to ask her friends about the whole soulmate thing! It was her first day at Hexside and obviously there would be some more important stuff going on, but she would still have to ask! If just to get the dirt on theirs.

Her first day, however, ended up being a little busier than expected. You know, on account of the whole “Leading a revolution and saving the school from both a physical threat (a basilisk) and a metaphorical threat (a basilisk. Also stagnation and a refusal towards innovation and individual expression or whatever.)” thing. She did see Amity very briefly in all of it, though!

Yeah, Amity!

Amity!

Amity.

...

So that was nice!

“Oh, right!” Luz yelled very suddenly, like a week or two later, as she walked towards Photography class with Willow, “Soulmates!”

“What about them?” Willow asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I got a thing! The soulmate thing!” Luz bounced on her heels a little, using her fingers to illustrate the sequence of events as she spoke. “I don’t know what it means, but I got one, and I was going to ask you about it! But then a bunch of stuff happened, so I totally spaced, but I remembered just now!”

Willow blinked. “Wait, what?”

“Yeah, you wanna see?”

Willow threw up her hands, “I mean… if you want to show me, Luz, that’s cool, but soulmate tattoos are kind of a personal thing? It’s literally why all our uniforms cover so much skin - I guess you wouldn’t know… that’s really weird that you have one? Don’t they not have those in the human world?”

“Nope! Except in fanfiction.” Luz shrugged, “Eda said something about how once I started using magic, the spell must have ‘found me’ or something.”

Hm. Curious. Willow thought about it for a moment. “Well, no one really knows how the soulmate spell works… it’s really old wild magic, like ‘might come from the Titan itself’ old.”

Luz put a hand on her chest, “Aw, like from its heart?”

“Actually, I think the leading theory is its spleen? Or a bile duct?” Willow shrugged, “I don’t know, I’m not exactly an expert, that’s just what the Cult of the Titan says.”

“I guess they would know, that sounds like a reasonable source of information,” Luz stroked her chin for a moment, “But yeah, I do kind of want to show you? In case there’s something weird about it, and… I’d just feel better if you knew, I guess. You don’t have to show me yours or anything if it’s a big deal, though.”

“Okay! Um… wow, I haven’t known someone well enough to have them show me their soulmate tattoo since- ... _anyway_ , if you want to do it right now, let’s go into the bathroom or something? We have like five minutes before class starts, and it’s definitely way weirder if you start waving it around in the hallway.”

One quick two-girl scamper into a bathroom stall later, Luz grinned as she took in the collection of smells and vandalism (and the new and innovative “smandolism” popular with kids at the time, you can draw your own conclusions about what that is and how it works).

“Wow, still too cramped for more than one person if you wanna swap secrets. I guess school bathrooms really are the same no matter where you are.”

“The upperclassmen say they used to be worse.”

“Also true in other dimensions.” Luz rolled up her sleeve, “Anyway, here.”

“Oof, the arm is a rough place for your soulmate tattoo to show up if you wanna keep it secret.” Willow looked at Luz’s tattoo and sort of. Paused, eyes narrowing a little. The kind of face a person makes when the gears in their head are turning very fast, when they come to a very sudden and strong realization.

“What, is it like… infected or something? Was Eda wrong, am I actually cursed!?”

“No! It’s just… Luz, I’m not one to meddle in affairs of the heart, but-”

Luz shook her head, “I am a-okay with meddling! Just get all up in my dumb heart affairs if you gotta! I promise I’d do the same for you!”

“...I think you consider that to be more comforting than it is.” Willow exhaled, pulling away from Luz’s arm, “But wait, you really don’t re-”

And at that moment, the bell screamed. Thirty seconds early, technically, but its hobby was and always had been exacerbating teen drama. You need one, when you have that kind of job! What was a bell good for if not keeping a good thing going?

“Oh no, class! C’mon, Luz, we gotta hurry!”

Photo class went great! Photo class was super fun! Turns out with magic you can just pull people’s memories right out of their heads? And they turn into polaroids - really not what Luz would have guessed, but in retrospect it did make sense? Kind of?

Fun fact no one asked, the inventor of the polaroid camera was, in a roundabout way, inspired by the memory extraction process of the Boiling Isles! The magic of the Boiling Isles has inspired several things on Earth, mostly really cool things but including some really boring ones! Like how a stray experimental death machine from the miniature people of Scalptopia ended up becoming those black binder clips with the wiggly wire wing bits that you flip to open and close them? You know, those things? Yeah, they used to basically be combat guillotines!

Oh right, we were on the arson part of the story. That might be more relevant to why you are actually reading this.

So Amity Blight, for lack of a more dignified term, messed up. This was rare (or common, depending on your interpretation of many of her actions and knowledge of her inner life) for her, at least on this scale (agreed). Sometimes a girl, in desperation that it not be known she used to hang out with another girl, tries to burn one of the second girl’s memories! And sometimes that ends in the first girl accidentally irreparably burning nearly all of the second girl’s memories! Ah, the follies of teenagerhood.

And after school, that first girl and the second girl’s friends - okay, look, enough hypotheticals, we all saw the episode, they went to the Owl House to ask Eda for help. And Eda agreed to help by sending Luz and Amity into Willow’s mind. But just before they went in, Eda squinted at Amity’s arm.

“You too, huh?”

“What?” Amity blinked. Luz, meanwhile, was working on keeping Willow from eating a pillow.

Eda pointed towards Amity’s sleeve, which had pulled back at some point in running to the Owl House, “Arm tattoos. Worst place to get them, Luz has one there too.”

“Wait, Luz has a soulmate tattoo?” Amity’s eyes widened.

“Yup. Just woke up with it a few days and/or weeks ago, I don’t remember, came running in here screaming that she thought someone laid a curse on her, it was a whole thing. Had to talk King down from going out on some kind of revenge crusade to avenge her. Weird, huh?”

Amity glanced over towards Luz, “Yeah… weird.” She smiled, “But I guess it makes sense, given all the other weird stuff about her.”

“Watch your tone, kid, you’ll give it away.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Anyway, Luz, get over here! Time to magically transmogrify you two into brain mist!”

And so the two of them were turned into brain mist, and sent into Willow’s brain! It was a surprisingly but not completely painless process, and suddenly there they were! Luz had always thought this sort of thing would involve, like, a tiny door slapped on the person’s forehead or something, but maybe that was just how it happened in video games.

It took a while and a lot of nearly being burned to death by a vengeful subconscious, but they did eventually jump into enough memories and develop enough as people to fix it! Amity was upgraded somewhere higher up the ladder towards “friend,” they got ready to leave, everything was a-okay.

Then, without meaning to, Amity caught a glimpse of one of Willow’s memories. 

She genuinely had not meant to, but it had seemed so simple and harmless - it was a memory in a _bathroom stall_ , that was weird to be important enough to get its own picture! And she saw Luz in it! She was, for reasons she had by now figured out but not told a single soul, very fond of looking at Luz!

Yeah, Luz!

Luz!

Luz.

Luz’s arm.

...

_Oh no._

They got out alright, though, and yet another wacky adventure ended. Gus went home to… figure something out for his interview (he succeeded), Amity went home to not go to a party and also to try to not lie awake at night thinking about Luz Noceda again (she failed), and Willow spared one last look back at the Owl House before she headed home.

Eh, Luz would for sure figure it out before Grom, right?


End file.
